Tuesday, September 20, 2022

Unsurprisingly, men are among the most strident anti-choicers

And also unsurprisingly, this trend has an Arizona element to it.

From CNN (emphasis added by me) -

These male politicians are pushing for women who receive abortions to be punished with prison time

A businessman turned state representative from rural Oil City, Louisiana, and a Baptist pastor banded together earlier this year on a radical mission.

They were adamant that a woman who receives an abortion should receive the same criminal consequences as one who drowns her baby.
[snip]
This year, three male lawmakers from Indiana attempted to wipe out existing abortion regulations and change the state's criminal statutes to apply at the time of fertilization. In Texas, five male lawmakers authored a bill last year that would have made getting an abortion punishable by the death penalty if it had gone into law. A state representative in Arizona introduced legislation that included homicide charges — saying in a Facebook video that anyone who undergoes an abortion deserves to "spend some time" in the Arizona "penal system." And a male Kansas lawmaker proposed a bill that would amend the state's constitution to allow abortion laws to pass without an exception for the life of the mother.

[snip]

Eric Swank, an Arizona State University professor who has studied gender differences in anti-abortion activists, said his research found that while men aren't necessarily more likely to consider themselves to be "pro-life" than women, they "are more willing to take the adamant stance of no abortion under any conditions."

[snip]

Lawmakers then gathered on the House floor to debate the bill while dozens of supporters gathered outside the chambers in what resembled a church service, reciting Bible passages and swaying together while singing hymns such as "Amazing Grace." Jeff Durbin, an Arizona-based pastor and head of a Christian production company Apologia Studios, which has more than 300,000 subscribers on YouTube, emceed and live-streamed the event. Durbin, who once played Michelangelo and Donatello in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise and became fervently religious after overdosing on ecstasy, is now "unapologetically seeking to criminalize and eliminate all forms of abortion without exception." He did not respond to requests for comment.


The article doesn't state it explicitly, but in 2021 failed Congressional candidate Walt Blackman introduced HB2050.


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